Opinion: Lessons Learned from Citizens Police Academy — I’m a Little Trigger-Happy, and You Wouldn’t Believe Some of the Guys Who Apply to Be Officers

By JOHN BOYLE, Asheville Watchdog

I’ve always contended I’d be a less-than-stellar cop.

I’m not the most patient guy with annoying people, and on occasion I have a bad temper. I like the general public, generally speaking, but I also don’t want to deal with them for 12 hours straight.

Also, I may be a little trigger-happy.

Those are among the lessons I learned in the Asheville Police Department’s fall Citizens Police Academy, a public outreach program started in 1991 to educate residents about policing in Asheville, the law — and the tough decisions cops sometimes have to make in a split second. The course ran every Thursday for 10 weeks, and we “graduated” Nov. 20.

Special thanks to Capt. Jonathan Brown and the other officers, detectives, technicians, attorneys and public relations folks who make this class happen. It was fascinating and well-crafted (and free), with a level of honesty and transparency that I found impressive.

The presenters packed in information ranging from constitutional law and searches to use of drones and how the forensics team collects evidence. (Blood goes everywhere at a crime scene, folks.) All of the classes were well done, but a few sessions really stood out, and that’s beyond the engrossing story Michaela Blanton Lowe told us about losing her husband to a traffic stop shooting.

Here are a few other highlights:

Everyone should go through live-action training scenarios

Officers dressed in street clothes and played the role of civilians/lawbreakers, while training officers briefed us on each scenario we would encounter:

A traffic stop involving a woman who is real mouthy and aggressive but not physically threatening you.
A woman in Pritchard Park who is well known to the department, has a trespassing warrant out on her, and is suffering mental health issues.
A male suspect wearing a black hoodie who’s broken into a coffee shop, where surveillance video shows he’s still inside.

I shot him.

Let me back up a bit. The training officers had presented a session on using a service weapon, in this case a Glock training pistol that fires plastic rounds, ejects the cartridge and makes a respectable pop.

With the coffee shop guy, all we were told was he was still inside and what he was wearing. So when I rolled up in my Ford Explorer copwagon, blue lights ablaze, I was primed for action.

He came hustling out of the business and wouldn’t listen when I asked him to stop. When I told him again to stop, he spun around, pistol in hand, and aimed at me. So I plugged him.

“You actually hit me in the thigh,” he said, surprising both of us.

My adrenalin was pumping. I was not expecting him to wheel on me that fast.

I’ve fired real pistols, but not at a moving target, nor one wielding a gun. I fired three shots and then spoke to the training officer, who asked me why I did what I did.

I said the suspect met the description, was not complying with orders and sure looked like he was going to shoot me. I also mentioned that I felt my life was in imminent danger.

The trainer said that was the key, and that once someone wheels on you like that with a gun, you cannot hesitate.

We watched a couple of other folks, and I have to say one woman wound up very pretend dead. I think she just wasn’t comfortable wielding a gun, real or not, and did not want to even pull it out.

It made me realize some people are just not suited to being a cop, and just how difficult police jobs are when it comes to self-preservation and that of the public.

Hesitate and you or someone on the street could be shot dead. Overreact and fire before the threat is real, and you could kill an innocent person or bystander.

I will note that I did not go “full John Wayne” on the suspect, as Capt. Brown described how local radio personality Mark Starling handled the scenario. He whipped out the gun and started blasting from the hip.

Giddyup, cowboy!

Obviously, actual police academy candidates go through a lot more training than this, as use of force is serious business.

In 2024, APD officers used physical force 228 times, Tasers 22 times, chemical force 11 times and a firearm once. Officers have discharged firearms just twice since 2020, according to department stats.

The traffic stop scenario came before this, so I had no reason to be jumpy, but I was. The “motorist” was agitated, obnoxious and immediately came charging out of her truck to complain about why she was being pulled.

I got her back inside and asked for her license and registration. When she lurched toward the glove box, I half-drew my pistol.

“You were going to shoot me, weren’t you?” she said loudly upon reemerging.

“Um, maybe,” I said sheepishly, wondering if my bodycam was actually recording all of this — and how the hell to delete it.

I asked the trainer if they ever got used to people moving so quickly toward the glove box, especially when seemingly everyone is armed. “Not really,” he said.

In the mental health scenario, I pretty much just kept the woman talking until the trainer mercifully stopped the session. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with her, other than calling her “Peppermint,” which she claimed was her name.

Turns out I was supposed to take her in for a mental health evaluation. I’d still be chatting her up if the officer hadn’t intervened.

The three encounters really made me think about what cops see and deal with every day, how they have to de-escalate situations and remain calm under stressful circumstances. It takes training, skill and the right personality.

A fascinating polygraph session

Speaking of which, the session Lt. Brian Hogan presented on use of the polygraph machine was absolutely fascinating, and a little mind-boggling. He said he uses the testing only a couple of times a year in criminal cases, as the results are not admissible in North Carolina courts.

But the department makes every job candidate go through one, and that’s where things got really interesting, and really creepy.

Hogan told us how he puts the candidates at ease, chats them up and explains in detail how everything works.

He also conducts an interview before even hooking someone up to the machine’s sensors, and that interview is where he mines most of the gold. The APD uses the polygraph to weed out unsuitable candidates, and that’s exactly what it did in the cases Hogan regaled us with.

The list of admissions from soon-to-be ejected police academy candidates was just astounding. It included a recent larceny from a Walmart, sexual abuse of a child, molestation of a friend, one guy who “relaxed” during breaks from work by self-pleasuring in the parking lot, and — drum roll — bestiality with a family dog.

The department weeds out potential criminals with a particular emphasis on domestic violence and hard drug use, but it also asks about candidates’ sexual behavior and any deviancy.

“I have to throw out these questions because you’re not going to admit to it, OK?” Hogan said. “And lo and behold, you throw it out enough, there’s going to be the bestiality with the family pet. And this is horrible — they always want to be canine officers.”

On behalf of the canine population out there, I’d just like to thank the APD for having a thorough screening process.

Here are some other intriguing things we learned:

Bomb Squad training — Bomb Squad head and Detective Capt. Joe Silberman told us how they handle a wide range of calls, including one that involved boxes and boxes of leftover dynamite that a road building company left in a warehouse, and their response to a call about a guy who had a really bad experience with an improvised hand grenade in Madison County.

He did not make it.

The APD bomb squad doesn’t go out on a lot of calls in Asheville, but it serves most of western North Carolina. The squad includes a big honking truck, a couple of 80-pound bomb suits, and several mobile robots.

One trooper of a classmate, Blair Johnson, donned the bomb suit piece by piece. Silberman then hopped up and down on her while she lay on the ground, demonstrating how strong the suit is. She looked a little surprised and later noted that she felt like “some kind of tactical step stool.”

Before blowing up a variety of large fruits and gourds, Silberman had a great line in describing the three sizes of robots the department uses to defuse devices.

“We call the smallest one here Lil’ Kim,” Silberman said, noting that it’s named after the hip hop artist and “definitely not” for Kim Roney, the City Council member and mayoral candidate who voted against the department acquiring the gadget and has voted against police appropriations several times.

Meeting the K-9s — I was surprised to learn that APD uses seven dogs, including a ridiculously friendly 2–year-old lab named Milo who’s trained in detecting explosives and proved it by finding a hidden stick of explosive material (not one that could actually explode). A partially trained dog like Milo can run $7,500, but an untrained Belgian Malinois (the most common type of police dog), can cost $13,000.

“Murder pizza” explained, and “Asheville is a snitchin’ city” — Silberman, who also heads up criminal investigations, told us, “Asheville is a snitchin’ city, and we exploit the hell out of that.” That got a good laugh.

About the pizza. Cops, not unlike reporters, order pizza for special occasions. While we do it for elections and such, they do it when working a homicide, which requires long hours and lots of staff. At the end of the night, detectives and officers have to hold a debriefing to go over details, and pizza is usually the popular choice. Hence, “murder pizza.”

Asheville has experienced sex trafficking — This is truly disturbing, but Silberman said it does occur here, but the victims, usually younger females, are often too scared to talk. It tends to happen through massage parlors, he said.

Nitrous oxide abounds at some concerts — Silberman also said they confiscated lots of bottles of nitrous oxide, a medical anesthetic that can also be misused as a recreational drug, at a couple of recent concerts, Billy Strings and Widespread Panic.

The APD is watching you, and your license plate — The department has 11 fixed locations around town where it can launch drones equipped with cameras. They put them in high-traffic, high-crime areas and can follow suspects or calls about suspicious people. The drones can pop out of their plastic shells and be airborne in seconds, as they’re on top of buildings.

The Sheriff’s Office has another 22 of them.

The APD also has vehicle license plate scanners on most department vehicles and can drive through a Walmart parking lot and scan hundreds of plates in no time. Since April 2024, the APD has scanned some 3.1 million license plates, matching just over 5,000 to a “hot list,” meaning the owners were wanted for something.

The French Broad River is a popular gun dumping spot, and your phone never really deletes messages — It’s not just flood debris in the river these days.

When police were investigating the horrific Candace Pickens slaying in May 2016, they searched for the murder weapon in the river near the Pearson Bridge Road bridge. They didn’t find the gun, but they did find “seven to 10” others in the river, which is apparently a popular spot for tossing firearms.

Pickens was killed by her boyfriend, Nathaniel Elija Dixon, who also shot and seriously wounded her 2-year-old son in a north Asheville park now named in her honor. Detectives cracked the case in part by tracking Dixon’s text messages and overall cell phone usage.

They were able to discover that his phone had synced up with Pickens’ phone in the park, which blew apart his claim that he wasn’t there. Also, the detective told us that your phone never really deletes text messages, unless the device is running out of hard drive space.

So if you think you’ve deleted those inappropriate texts, they very well could still be on your hard drive.

A surprising level of honesty

In all, I learned way more about APD than I ever thought I would, and I’ve lived here for 30 years. I also liked that the presenters were honest with us, with one plainly stating that not all cops are good, but they do their best to weed out the bad ones.

I completely realize that these academies are an opportunity to promote the department and sway our opinions. But you can rest assured that we’ll continue to scrutinize the department’s behavior and spending.

Johnson, my fellow graduate who wore the bomb suit, told us she moved here six months ago and had attended the Citizens Police Academy in Houston. She wanted to see how APD would stack up.

“Within the first week, it became very clear that this was a whole different experience,” Johnson said. “This academy felt personal and generally connected to the community, which honestly was really great to see, especially being so new to the area. We also had some really unforgettable classes.”

She referenced the bomb suit here, noting she was gasping for breath in the thing. But she also noted that every instructor had a willingness to really talk to us, before and after class.

“There was no dodging of difficult topics, no canned answers, no holding back, just real conversations with real people who care deeply about what they do, and that is some of what made Asheville Academy so special,” Johnson said.

Well put. Stay safe out there.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at [email protected]. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email [email protected]. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/donate.